


Setting Things To Rights

by Pendragyn



Series: Ineffable Bastards Universe [6]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Adam Young Still Has Powers (Good Omens), Agnes Nutter Continues To Meddle, Agnes Nutter Ghost Witch, Gen, Loose Canon, Missing Scene, The Night After the Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens), bad dream, ominous whispering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:21:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24862990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pendragyn/pseuds/Pendragyn
Summary: The night after the almost apocalypse, Adam Young gets a visit from the ghost of Agnes Nutter, and she helps him sort out a few worrisome loose ends left over from the world not ending.
Relationships: Agnes Nutter & Adam Young, Deirdre Young & Adam Young
Series: Ineffable Bastards Universe [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1429900
Comments: 12
Kudos: 32





	Setting Things To Rights

**Author's Note:**

> Happy One Year Anniversary to the Ineffable Bastards Universe! June 23, 2019 was the day I officially started writing it down instead of just playing it out in my head. Thanks everyone for coming along with me on this mad journey. <3 <3 <3

“Come back. Please.”

Adam stared down at his best friends in the whole universe, sure his heart was breaking as they turned and ran away. He knew then he’d messed up bad, maybe beyond fixing. He tried to call them back, to beg even, but no sound would come and he closed his eyes against the sting of tears. _Come back! Please!_ he wanted to say, pressing his hands to his tear-dampened face. _I’m sorry!_

_**You don’t need them. You can have new friends. Better friends. All you have to do is show us the way.** _

A low growl and a familiar waft of doggy breath as a wet tongue lapped at his cheek had Adam opening his eyes, and he hugged Dog tightly in relief. “Oh Dog! I’m so glad you’re here,” he whispered hoarsely, smiling when Dog licked him again. “I am sorry, you know that, don’t you?”

Dog whined and licked him again in answer.

“Thanks boy.” Adam let out a much heavier sigh and rubbed at his eyes when tears threatened again. The dream had been so real, too real, more memory than dream, and frightening in ways he didn’t want to think about. It hurt, knowing he’d hurt his friends so bad they’d stopped being his friends. And even though they’d forgiven him in the end, would they ever really trust him again? Especially when he could still do what he’d done? Would he trust someone who had done that to him?

In the silence there were two faint but distinct knocks that Adam heard clear as a bell. Dog’s ears perked up and Adam blinked and they both looked around the room for a source of the noise. There wasn’t much light but it was more than enough to show that nothing was out of place.

Still, Adam found himself saying, “Who’s there?”

A faint glimmering form stepped through the door. It was an old woman, dressed in really old clothes. “I have waited a long while for this meeting, Adam Young.” She bowed at him, a faint smile on her lips. “I be Agnes Nutter, witch. And ghost.”

Adam stared at her with wide eyes. Dog was staring just as intently but seemed disinclined to bark or growl, which put Adam at ease. “You’re a ghost witch? A real one? Not… not something I made up?”

“Real as rain. Anathema be my many times over great granddaughter. I wrote the book she told ye about.”

They watched one another for a moment before Adam asked, “Why are you here?”

“Same reason I've done most things in me life and afterlife; to ensure the world be not destroyed by the whims of beings who care naught for it.” Agnes glided to the bed and sat. “That’s why I have come to ye, young Adam. The story be not ended yet, and ye still have time to set things to rights.” She folded her hands in her lap and said bluntly, “I wrote that book to ensure all would be where they needed to be, to stop the world ending, young Adam, because I saw what would become of ye and the world otherwise.”

Adam shivered and Dog whined, pressing close to offer him comfort. “There were… whispers,” he admitted, his arm curled around Dog to give himself comfort. “Telling me to do things, bad things.” He thought of the nightmare that had just awoken him. “I think they’re still here.”

“Aye. They will never leave ye be, not as long as ye remain a vessel for the devil’s power.”

Adam rubbed at his damp face with a corner of his blanket and frowned at her. “What do you mean? I did like the angels said and it worked. It changed things, didn’t it?”

“Aye, true enough, ye are no longer bound to the one who bid himself thy ‘father’. But ye still have the power given to ye, to change the whole world. It rests in ye, waiting to be called on, wanting to be called on, and as long as it be there, ye are naught but a plump juicy apple, ripe for the picking. Ye must use the power afore our foes regroup enough to try to bend ye to their will.” She waited a beat while he just gaped at her and asked, “What wish thee, young Adam?”

“I… I don’t know. I’m just a kid! I don’t want to be picked on, and I don’t want to be in charge of changing the world!”

“Aye, ‘tis most unfair to put the weight of the world upon the shoulders of just one person,” said Agnes, looking down sadly at her partially transparent hands. “I often wished that there had been another way, but try as I might I could find no way to spare Anathema. I can do naught now but do my best to make it up to her.” She sighed and looked back up at him. “But ye, young Adam, ye don’t have to bear this burden alone. Ye can ask for help.”

“I can?” he said, thinking of Anathema and all the things she wanted to make better, but some inner voice pulled him up short before he could do something rash, for probably the first time in his life. “But how will I know if they’re telling me the right things? That they’re telling me the truth?”

“‘Tis a hard question to answer. There be many who would use such power for greedy or hateful reasons, those be easy to weed out. But the ones who mean well, but be wrongheaded, well… Anathema believes much of what she told ye, so to her, it was the truth.”

“Oh.” He rubbed at his head, his mind feeling a little too full with all the things he was having to think about, though it wasn’t nearly as bad as how it had felt at the airbase. He never again wanted to feel that… _awake_ was the only word he could think of to describe the feeling. He’d be able to see and feel and sense so much and he shuddered and put the memory out of his thoughts. “So how will I know who to trust?”

“That answer will have to come from within ye. Who do ye trust now? Some people unthinkingly break trust all the time, do they not? Do wrong though they know it be wrong. Leave messes for others to make right. Ye know that well enough, Adam Young,” Agnes said pointedly.

Adam sank lower and lower as she spoke. “But nobody gets hurt… usually.” She just gave a disbelieving hum. He couldn’t help but think of how he’d treated Pepper and Brian and Wensley and Dog. How willing he’d been to leave his friends and family behind while under the influence of the voices.

But his friends had done the right things even when he hadn’t. He knew without a shadow of a doubt he could trust them no matter what. “Does… does it need to be just one person?” he asked.

“It can be as many or as few as ye wish,” Agnes answered. “So long as they be willing, of course. Ye must _ask_ , not _demand_.”

He considered her words, and who else he trusted to do the right thing, petting Dog as he did so. A thought struck him and he asked, “Can I give the power to someone else? Will the voices start bothering them? Will it make them into a target?”

“If ye give them enough to be seen as a threat or a prize, yes,” she warned. “Especially if they can not fend for themselves against those who would seek to do them harm.”

Adam flopped back onto his pillow with a grunt. “Ugh! Why’s it got to be so complicated? Why can’t I just keep the magic and have fun and stuff?”

“ _Fun?”_ she echoed in an eldritch sepulchral tone that seemed to come from the bottom of a well. “Fun, was it, knowing all the people in your town and the world would soon be dead? And making slaves of your friends, fun was that?” Adam shot up, a denial on his lips, but the knowing look in her glowing eyes had him flinching away. “This power was bestowed upon ye to rend the world in twain, to bring it asunder, to destroy all hope and joy. Is that, as ye call it, ‘ _fun_ ’?”

“No! I don’t want that!”

“No?” The eldritch glow and tone vanished. “Pleased be to hear it. But _sorry_ does naught for that which was broken beyond repair nor does it console the families of those missing and dead.”

“Dead?!” Adam’s stomach clenched at the word. “But—” _I didn’t mean to,_ seemed beyond inadequate. And it was a lie, because he _had_ meant to at the time, under the influence of the voices.

“Aye, as dead as I be. Did ye think those eaten by the kraken were not real people? With lives and hopes and families to feed? And those pulled into your fantasies of Atlantis, and aliens, and listeners in tunnels? How art they to return home, if they even can?”

“B-but Anathema was the one who gave me those magazines—” He knew it was the wrong thing to say even as he said it and Agnes just canted her head and stared at him, a little bit of the eldritch glow returning to her eyes. “I-I knew some of them probably weren’t really real. Pepper an’ Wensley an’ Brian said as much but… I wanted them to be.”

“So ye wished them into being.” He nodded. “There were worse things ye could have wished for. That they wanted ye to wish for.”

He shuddered and nodded again, thinking of the visions he’d had when it was at its worst. “Yeah. Oh, is that, that’s why— you wanted to give me other things to wish for. Better things.”

She gave him a proud smile. “Clever boy. Aye. If ye had truly gone down that path, ye would have used up all the power in the wishing. Instead ye have a chance to put things right.” She held open her hand when Dog crept close enough to sniff at her and scritched behind his ear when he crept a little closer yet. “Ye spoke of angels, telling ye what to do. What did they say?”

The memories of what had happened in that odd bit of time where still vividly sharp in Adam’s mind. He could almost smell the thunderstorm and bonfire scent of the sand again, and hear the susurrous of their feathers as they’d flexed their wings. “They said it was good I was human, and a kid. And that reality would do what I wanted it to. And that they’d help me, no matter what.”

“They wanted to kill ye,” she said matter-of-factly and Adam gave her a sharp look which she answered with another small smile. “But ye trusted them anyway. Why?”

Unlike the odd time in the desert, all the things leading up to that and after were already becoming a little hazy and dreamlike. Somehow he’d been able to see the two people inside the one body, and had certainly heard them yelling about killing him. But had also seen the fear and grief beneath the surface, and far more than they’d probably wanted anyone to see. “They… they were just trying to save the world. From me and everything else. Even though they knew it would probably… get them in a lot of trouble.” He didn’t want to say what he really meant; that it would get them killed.

“It has,” she murmured. “They shall be tried and executed in the morning.”

“What? No!” Adam protested. “That’s not fair! They were trying to save the world! They were doing the right thing and they shouldn’t die because of it!”

“They disobeyed, broke the oaths they made to Heaven and Hell—”

“No!” Adam wiped furiously at the tears running down his face. “No, I don’t care, they’re angels, and _angels can’t die_. It’s Heaven and Hell who should be in trouble, not them!” He sniffled hard as a glimmer of an idea formed in his mind. He stared hard at Agnes. “They said reality would do what I wanted, and it did. _You_ said I have a chance to fix things.”

She nodded solemnly. “Aye, I did.”

“So how do I fix it? How do I fix everything that got messed up because of me?” He put his arm around Dog when he whimpered anxiously. “Help me, please?”

Agnes gave him a broad beaming smile. “I thought ye would never ask.”

**∞**

“Wait! Don’t go!”

Warm soft arms and the comforting scent of his mother curled around Adam and he felt her brush the hair from his face and press a kiss to his forehead. “Shh, Adam, shh, I haven’t gone anywhere. It was just a bad dream.”

“Mum?” Adam mumbled, opening his eyes. It was a surprise to see his room bathed in sunlight and his mum smiling down on him. Last he remembered was Agnes saying she had to go and that she was proud of him. _Was it just a dream? Had it all been a dream?_ he wondered, relieved to think he hadn’t hurt his friends but disappointed that magic wasn’t real.

“Morning, sleepy head,” she smiled.

He smiled back and shifted, happy to feel Dog curled up beside him, but the happiness vanished when he remembered that Dog wasn’t supposed to be inside. “Uh… naughty Dog, how’d you get in—“

“That will be enough of that, mister,” Deirdre said, running her hand over Adam’s hair again, trying to not let out the smile his antics almost always inspired. “I know full well you’ve been sneaking him in here since that first night. His hair was all over everything and I could see his tail wagging from under the bed, but I didn’t want to spoil your fun.”

The little thrill he’d been nurturing, at getting away with something illicit, fizzled with the realization that he hadn’t actually gotten away with anything. “Oh.”

She frowned and shook her head. “Your father and I considered taking Dog away after the worry you caused us yesterday. What in the world made you go to the airbase?”

 _Not a dream,_ he realized, the disappointed relief morphing into a tumble of confused emotions he couldn’t sort out. “I dunno.”

She let out a sigh, as though she’d expected that answer. “Alright. Well, it’s time for you to get up. You have got a long day of tidying ahead of you.” She chuckled and leaned over to gave him a hug when he sighed. “Terrible I know, but you need to think about the consequences of your actions Adam. You could’ve been hurt, or gotten Wensley or the others hurt.”

“Sorry.” He’d sighed out of habit at the reminder of his punishment but snaked his arms around her neck and hugged her tightly. “I love you.”

Deirdre smiled. “I love you too, but that won’t get you out of being grounded, mister. Now up you get, breakfast’s almost ready.” She playfully tweaked his nose and scritched Dog behind his ear just where he liked it before leaving him to get dressed.

Adam flopped back onto his pillow and started petting Dog as he stared up at the ceiling, his thoughts whirling around. _Magic’s really real! And so are witches and wizards and ghosts and, and maybe aliens? Agnes didn’t actually say. And demons and angels…_ He rolled over and looked out at the garden. _I hope what I did was enough to fix things. I feel different anyway._

He was going to get to be just a kid, at least for a little while according to Agnes. Then he and Pepper and Brian and Wensley were going to get to learn magic with their new friends! And he was perfectly happy with that.

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by prompt #53 "Come Back" from flashfictionfridayofficial.tumblr.com. I went well over their 1k limit, but I'm glad to have been inspired after such a long drought.


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